5 comments:

Yeah, but try running the same reports with "Islamic terrorism" as a search term as well. This quickly reveals that most Americans are fairly rational; Google returns an index value of 100 for that term right after the Orlando massacre, versus index values of 13 and 14 for "Christian hate" and "Christian homosexuality" at the same time. There are frontlashers out there, to be sure, but they are a blessedly small (if vocal) part of the American landscape.

What interests me more, actually, is the fact that "Islamic terrorism" ranks roughly equal to your other terms at times other than immediately after a horrific terrorist attack on American soil. This suggests that people interested in culture warrior garbage are constantly operating at a more stepped-up tempo than the ordinary American. When something attention-grabbing happens these lefties can amp up their activity somewhat, but their propaganda pales compared to the inherent good sense of the American people, during those brief moments when that collective good sense can be engaged.

Which, when you think about it long enough and hard enough, portends well for a certain Mr. Trump.

I did. I thought about including it in the post but elected not to since it's not surprising--most Americans aren't ideologues, so when they heard about a Muslim shooter in Orlando, their natural inclination to find out more was to use search terms like "Muslim terrorism Orlando", etc. Those who immediately took to looking for 'counterexamples' are ideologues of the worst order. They weren't looking for information on a news event that had just happened, they were looking for ways to control the narrative about that news event.